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So Joe the guitarist and Chris the drummer are metalheads, Sandra the bassist loves soul, Alex the keyboardist is obsessed with punk, and Bob the vocalist always wanted to be a jazz singer. After a few arguments over what musical direction the band should go in, they eventually come up with a solution: All of them!

For works which use multiple, disparate genres without actually mixing them together, see Genre Roulette. Compare and contrast with Genre-Busting, where a work fits into no genres rather than multiple. Also compare Rock Me, Amadeus!, when classical themes get quoted in other genres. See also Avant Garde Music.

Rock'n'roll originated as a mixture of rhythm & blues and country with some blues, gospel, and folk music thrown in for good measure.

Progressive Rock, to a tee. Progressive rock started (arguably) when King Crimson tried to create rock music from classical influences rather than blues ones. After 30-plus years of experimentation by many bands combining all the musical genres known to mankind under the 'Progressive Rock' banner and coming up with wildly varying results, Many prog fans think that if you're in a prog band and not invoking this trope, then you're just not doing it properly.

Progressive Metal follows this as well. If it's metal, and you're not sure what subgenre it falls into, it's probably progressive metal.

Post-Rock may very well be this for rock being combined with Romantic and early 20th Century Classical.

Symphonic Metal, heavy metal mixed with symphonic classical music. Therion, the leader of the genre, takes their genre-blending quite seriously, as their 2009 live album The Miskolc Experience, recorded at the International Opera Festival in Hungary, featured about a dozen classical compositions rewritten from the ground up to incorporate modern heavy-metal instruments along with the original orchestras, choirs, and opera soloists. Epica did something similar at the same event with The Classical Conspiracy, which incorporated covers of neoclassical film soundtracks (for example, "The Imperial March" from The Empire Strikes Back) as well as traditional classical tunes such as Edvard Grieg's "In the Hall of the Mountain King", followed by a set of their own music.

Deep Purple, with a classically trained keyboards player, were one of the earliest examples. Their early LP The Book Of Taliesyn is a pretty good example, incorporating a classical string quartet on one track. (Anthem)

Punk jazz combines the energy, speed, and distortion of punk with the atonal, chaotic, and unpredictable ramblings of some strains of jazz.

Psychobilly is punk mixed with Rockabilly, while gothabilly is goth rock mixed with psychobilly.

To the extent that punk was a "return to roots" movement for rock and roll (see above), psychobilly is pretty much just standard rockabilly with the volume and tempo turned Up to Eleven.

Gothabilly puts it all in a drippy surf guitar echo tank.

Two-tone is the offspring of ska and punk.

Ska itself is the offspring of calypso and rock and roll, and has been mixed with everything from folk to metal.

Calypso itself is the combination of mento with a horn section. It also has incorporated jazz, swing and rock and roll, and its offspring Soca has incorporated electronics, disco, dancehall and Indian music as well.

Ska later evolved into Rocksteady, which was invented by slowly down the ska beat and then focusing on the offbeat, then evolved into Reggae by adding guitar, organ and deep, changing basslines.

Celtic punk, which combines punk rock with Scottish, Irish and occasionally Welsh or Breton folk. Pioneered by Anglo-Irish group The Pogues and popularised by groups like Dropkick Murphys and Flogging Molly.

It should be noted that this is frequently made by North Americans who claim Irish ancestry but don't actually know anything about Ireland.

Gogol Bordello is a self-described "Gypsy punk" band that plays a mixture of punk, cabaret, dub, and Gypsy folk music.

The Zydepunks as well, although vocally they're closing to bands like Flogging Molly.

The more general term "folk punk" is used to refer to the style played without any self-conscious ethnic alignment. It developed in the UK as a sister-style to celtic punk; the two were more or less an identical movement until the latter.

Folk Metal, which crosses metal with (usually) Scandinavian traditional folk, ranges from Ensiferum's attempts to take metal even further over the top, to Korpiklaani, which is...something else entirely. Special mention goes to Alestorm for being pirate metal.

Korpiklaani describes their style as "old people's music with heavy metal guitars". Frontman Jonne Jarvela's started out with Sami folk band Shamaani Duo, added synthesizers and heavier guitars and formed a new band, Shaman. Shaman then became Korpiklaani by dropping the synthesizers and Sami language lyrics, and adding traditional instruments and a more metal sound.

Finntroll is a special case for Folk Metal. Along with the primary components of their music being black metal, Finnish folk music and "humppaa" style polka, over the years they've also added dashes of punk, classical, Caribbean music, honky tonk, and whatever else they felt like. They also sing exclusively about trolls in Swedish (although they are from Finland, Swedish sounds more like Troll).

There are a number of different approaches to folk metal, ranging from the Black Metal with added Scandinavian folk of Finntroll to the English folk song made dark and growly of Skyclad

Folk Metal is usually a combination of Death/Black/Power Metal with whatever the band members' local/ethnic folk music traditions are. It has spawned two sub-genres — Celtic Metal, which is Folk Metal incorporating Celtic revival styles; and Oriental Metal, which is Folk Metal based on Middle-Eastern musical traditions. It has also indirectly spawned two other, similar sub-genres — Viking Metal (Power, Black, or Death Metal with some traditional Scandanavian influence) and Pirate Metal (Power Metal with a touch of Folk Metal and a romantic pirate theme).

Christian black metal. Formerly known as Unblack metal, a term now used mostly perjoratively by true black metal fans and artists. Just to drive home how out of place it really is: In the early 90's, church burnings were considered an acceptable way to earn respect in the Norwegian black metal scene. Murder, suicide, spikey shin guards and absurd facepaint all happened as well. To go along with that, the lyrics are frequently generally anti-religious and misanthropic, specifically anti-Christian, Satanic, nihilistic, atheistic, and pro-neopaganist. For most of this and more distilled into one band, read up on Mayhem.

Grunge itself began as a fusion of early doom metal, hardcore punk, and glam rock illustrated with bands like Green River, Malfunkshun and Skin Yard. Later bands would incorporate indie, psychedelic, and post-punk influences as well.

Electronic music in general lives and breathes this, due to having a huge variety of subgenres with only small differences, and having a wide variety of individual styles, and thousands of different synthesizers and different drumsounds that can be used.

Musica Mestiza is this taken to the extreme: a mix of Salsa, Punk, Reggae, Ska, Hiphop, Flamenco, Raï, African Rhythms and any other genre that seems like a good idea to add to the mix. Manu Chao is probably the most popular artist is this genre.

Avant-Garde Metal thrives on this trope. Bands either combine lots of genres, or combine a few genres and have a really odd way of putting it all together. They also often abruptly switch between styles.

J-Pop is characterized by sounding perky and glittery, while mixing techno/electronica, hard/soft rock, and another random genre with nonstandard, but still poppy, chord progressions.

Moombahton takes the melodic elements of House Music, slows them down to 110 BPM and adds a Reggaeton beat.

Moombahcore is a fusion of Moombahton with modern, aggressive Dubstep.

Dark Psytrance = Psychedelic trance + industrial + hardcore techno.

Since Steampunk originated from a literary genre (rather than from a musical style, like goth), it has no specific musical style of its own. Hence, steampunk musicians tend to mix old and new styles in various ways.

Chillwave is a new genre termed to describe a recent crop of musicians who make retraux 80's-inspired synthpop but with lo-fi/shoegaze/psychedelic production values. Possibly the closest we will get to a sonic embodiment of the nostalgia filter, as the genre deliberately attempts to sound like old, warped cassette tapes one might randomly find in the house or car. Lyrical themes include drugs,the beach, and just chilling out in general.

Vaporwave, during its early days, could be described as Chopped & Screwed edits (more or less) of Pop/R&B/Smooth Jazz music from The '80s and '90s, sometimes mixed with Shoegaze. These days, it has spawned many different styles (or sub-genres if you wish to call them as such) that could all have descriptions here. Vaportrap, for example, is a mix of Ambient music and Trap Music.

Hair Metal was born from mixing equal amounts of Rock, Pop, Punk and Heavy Metal and somehow making it work. Needless to say, it's generally very upbeat.

Take a look atWikipedia's list of stylistic origins of Witch House. Bear in mind that the list has been dramatically cut down over time as well. While the genre tends to be a highly variegated Mind Screw-y hodgepodge of influences in general, Salem's King Night (arguably one of the better-known releases within the genre) exemplifies what we're dealing with pretty accurately: the first three tracks consist of dark, hazy, dramatic electronic music, with reverb-heavy synth soundscapes and distant vocals seeming to simultaneously take influence from Shoegaze, Trance and Industrial music, backed by skipping, somewhat arrhythmic beats with heavy Hip-Hop and Dubstep influence. Think that's an unusual melting pot of influences? By track four, "Sick," we get Dirty South-influenced rapping over ominous soft synths and operatic vocal inflections. The album only gets weirder from there, with two straight up Hip-Hop tracks, slightly more stripped down Synth-Pop/Shoegaze numbers, fuzzed-out power chords and just about everything else in between. Other artists purported as examples of Witch House range from ethereal dub to Hip-Hop beats with a nihilistic edge and noisy, cracked-out pop. The only constants among these bands seem to be a dark (sometimes intentionally campy) quasi-occult aesthetic, vocals processed to the point of being incomprehensible, loving spoonfuls of reverb, and this trope.

Indie Pop separates itself from vanilla, label-controlled Pop music by letting the artist have full creative control over their material. As such, it often sees pop-style music mixed with a wide variety of genres such as synthpop, R&B (often called PBR&B), trip-hop, punk, folk, dream pop, baroque pop, electronica... and whatever else the artist can think of.

Deep house was born out of a mix of Chicago house with jazz-funk and soul.

There's also future house. Which is house taken to its logical extreme.

The whole point classical crossover music, where classical arrangements are used to combine with pop, rock, electronica, metal...

K Pop was born out a fusion of dance, electronica, pop, hip-hop, and R&B with a high sense of fashion. To say the least, it's very bubbly.

New Jack Swing is a fusion of R&B, Hip Hop, Disco and Funk that came to life in 1986 with Janet Jackson's album Control, produced by Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis, and further spearheaded by Teddy Riley and Bernard Belle during the late Eighties to mid-Nineties. Using hip hop drum machines and mixing them with Gospel-influenced R&B melodies, new jack swing redefined the sound of contemporary R&B for many years.

There is perhaps no better example of an artist embodying this trope than composer Yoko Kanno. All forms of music are mixed together at her whim. The Seatbelts were a dream band fronted by Kanno, formed for the express purpose of making the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack, and they lived and breathed this trope.

Deep Purple is a hard rock band, no question about it, but in 1969 they performed along with the London Symphony Orchestra under conduction of Malcolm Arnold. This unique album in their catalogue was released as Concerto for Group and Orchestra and was in fact their first Live Album!

Alter Bridge Myles Kennedy's voice is essentially hard rock wailing a la Robert Plant, grunge breathiness with a hint of soul. Mark Tremonti's playing is basically proggy Alternative Speed Metal with just a bit of blues, Spanish guitar and southern twang making surprise appearances. The rhythm section can have some progressive tendencies as well. All while being considered a swan song to 70's classic rock and a spiritual successor to Led Zeppelin.

Imagine what would be if a church organist goes crazy, learns to growl, masters the wisdom of working with sound on computer, learns to beat drums rhythms in the manner of Slipknot, plays drum machine à la Venetian Snares. Have you imagined that? Well, Igorrr is something of this kind.

The French solo artist The Algorithm is a very good example, as he generally combines grindcore, chiptune and progressive rock genres, while each song touches upon other genres separately. He made a cool remix of Igorrr (see just above) too.

Shiina/Sheena Ringo blends jazz, jpop, electronica, classical, and rock together quite flawlessly. Justified in the fact that she grew up listening to plenty of the bands listed here.

Firewater mixes Klezmer, Punk, Gypsy music, Jazz, and just about anything else Tod A can think of in pretty much every song. And they were one of the first.

Electrocutica is a Japanese band using a strange but wonderful blend of classical, electronic, rock/metal music and alternating between human and Vocaloid singers. The end result is usually something extremely amazing and Mind Screw-y.

Tones On Tail, formed by former Bauhaus members Daniel Ash and Kevin Haskins, were psychedelic/surf/goth rock.

Somewhat ironically, many of the bands that initially inspired Goth have very little to do with any cohesive, named genre, including the one they helped create. The Birthday Party were more like a de-funkified version of The Pop Group (see below), while The Virgin Prunes were essentially performance artists with a post-punkish musical element.

Buckethead has mixed and played many genres, including funk, different kinds of rock and metal, jazz, ambient and many others to some unique and sometimes downright weird results. It's no wonder people usually classify his music simply as Avant Garde Music.

Skindred is a mix of reggae and metal. In their song "Nobody", they refer to themselves as "Ragga metal punk hip-hop"

Several classically artists have begun incorporating different musical stylings into their music. Some famous ones, Vanessa Mae combined classical violin with techno, and the girl group Bond has combined classical with rock, pop, world, and pretty much everything else. It actually caused a problem for Bond, they were trapped in a "too pop for classical charts, to classical for pop charts" conundrum for quite a while.

Sandinista!! in particular. Highly underrated (though it has become a very triumphant case of Vindicated by History). Lots of fun dub experiments. Perhaps copying Public Image Ltd.'s Metal Box? Along with Blondie, they were also the first group to mix hip-hop with rock with "The Magnificent Seven" and "Lightning Strikes (Not Once But Twice)", back when hip-hop was still very much an underground genre.

In fact, the New Wave movement in general can be described as punk/everything else.

Public Image Ltd. — so much, in fact that alot of their songs were aimed at weeding out the punks who complained about Johnny Rotten's new sound. See Albatross, Foderstompf, This is what you want, this is what you get.

Nearly every Beck album contains some flavor of Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly, to the point where you could say that mixing and matching musical genres is his genre.

"I've always dreamed of being a music/poet that transcends genres even as he reinvents them."

The Dresden Dolls, in their own words, are "Brechtian punk cabaret", something they made up because they didn't want anyone to use the word "goth" when trying to label them.

Lindsey Stirling likes to put violins where they don't normally belong, for example in dubstep.

Havalina Rail Co. (later just Havalina) mixed up the styles with every single album they did:

Their self-titled debut was a mix of zydeco, folk, and swing.

The Diamond in the Fish was a mix of Rat-Pack jazz, rock, and blues.

Russian Lullabies mixed rock and blues with East European folk influences (the band read about Russian folk music, but they deliberately didn't listen to any of it, so the end result was something else entirely).

America had the band playing rock, bluegrass, surf rock, country, jazz, Latino rock, Hawaiian, blues... one gets the impression they were trying to cover every single genre that could be considered uniquely American.

And Woven Hand, one of the spin-off bands, adds Medieval and Native American influences to the mix.

Xera is Asturian folk (think Celtic music and you won't be too far off) mixed with techno.

In their last two albums, the White Stripes have had Jack White playing a marimba on several tracks on one, and two songs with BAGPIPES on the other, one of which was a heavy, "White Rabbit"-esque psychadelic freakout. With a bagpipe.

Though hardly critically acclaimed, Korn beat them to the punch by years.

There's an artist named Bud Melvin who combines Game Boy chiptunes with banjo and steel guitar.

Bristol post-punk band The Pop Group are by design a fusion of punk rock, hard funk, dub reggae and free jazz, with bits of West African ritual drum music, surf-pop, Captain Beefheart (see below), early hip-hop and psychedelic noise. In spite of many imitators, it is generally agreed that there has been no-one quite like them since, and they're even harder to categorize after their reformation. Summed up with this image◊.

Flight of the Conchords is New Zealand's fourth most popular guitar-based digi-bongo acapella-rap-funk-comedy folk duo.

Emilie Autumn mixed influences from classical and electronic music to create a genre she calls "Violindustrial" or "Victoriandustrial".

Emilie's music during the Enchant era is also very hard to classify. It could probably be described as a mixture of pop and jazz, with classical violins.

Soul Coughing were (and still are) so hopelessly sui generis that they had to invent a genre name for themselves — "deep slacker jazz". It's very jazz-inspired (especially evident on Ruby Vroom), but there are rock songs, and indie/pop rock is often injected into the mix.

Van Canto are an capella power metal band from Germany. They have five vocalists four whom just make instrumentesque noises, a singer and a drummer. Check out their cover of Metallica's "Battery". Also Nightwish's "Wishmaster".

Actually, despite the unusual (lack of) instrumentarium, they do not differ stylistically from any heavy/power metal band. Their covers are a good example since they do not stick out as "different" from the rest of their songs.

Gazpacho has been described as "classical post ambient nocturnal atmospheric neo-progressive folk world rock."

If you happen to be listening to a band who can go through funk, pop, jazz, soul, swing, alt rock and death metal in the same song and think "Business is usual" you're probably listening to something by Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, Mr. Bungle).

A Day To Remember from pop punk to death metal with post-hardcore and metalcore in between... well it's something.

If music reviewers are any indication, every band who ever existed mixed krautrock into their music.

French band Magma can best be described as Progressive/Symphonic/Gospel/Jazz fusion with vocals sung in a made-up language called Kobaian. So unusual and unique, that bandleader Christian Vander came up with a new word to describe it: Zeuhl, which means "celestial music" in Kobaian.

Primus. Full stop. Their music is kind of like thrash metal crossed with psychedelic... funk... polka?

Related note: "...have you heard the brand new sound? It's a cross between Jimi Hendrix, Bocephus, Cher and James Brown. It's called Heavy-Hometown-New-Wave-Cold-Filtered-Low-Calorie-Dry" from the Primus song "Mr. Krinkle".

Useless trivia fact: Primus are the only band to have a genre in Winamp's drop down list named after them.

The programmer for that menu justified the band's inclusion as a genre into themselves by saying:

"You show me another band whose sound is based on a classically trained banjo player treating a four-string bass guitar like a banjo, and we'll call it a genre. Until then, Primus is Primus, and nobody else is."

Les Claypool's (bassist and vocalist of Primus) solo career is made of this trope. Only weirder.

The band Sub City Dwellers refer to themselves as "Ska Soul Reggae Rock 'n' Roll". They are also well known and loved in the Winnipeg Punk Scene.

The band In/Humanity jokingly called themselves "Emotional Violence" or "Emo Violence" to make fun of both the genre names for Emo and Power Violence, two horribly named but decent genres they drew much of their influence from. This label was also applied to Orchid, another band that mixed the two (though they leaned closer to grindcore) and their spiritual successor Ampere.

Humorously, this became one of the more "serious" replacement terminologies for screamo (as opposed to more blatant joke terms such as scramz) after the title was stolen in the public conscious by pop-punk bands of the early 2000s.

Ayreon is a rock opera with prog metal, symphonic metal, prog rock, folk music, and pretty much everything else at some point. The vocalists range from extreme metal growlers to more typical rock singers to very operatic singers.

Or, to borrow from the newspaper ad that led to their formation: a band whose members really dig Peter, Paul & Mary and Hüsker Dü.

Jethro Tull combine hard rock, the blues, jazz, English folk music and progressive rock styles, and combine electric, acoustic and electronic instruments on the same tune at the same time. The lead singer plays flute, which is more of a lead instrument at times than the electric guitar. The band have also dabbled in pop, East Indian and Arabic music, new age, electronica, new wave synth-pop, symphonic rock and bits of psychedelia. Despite this, they have their own style, and very few bands have been successful at copying them.

Your average Bela Fleck and the Flecktones song will combine at the very least Jazz, Funk, and Bluegrass. Some go much farther than this— on varying albums, they've added everything from Indian traditional music (on Shanti) to Classical (Fugue from Prelude, their heavily latin-inflected take on a Bach piece) into the mix. The apex of this is their take on "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," which featured both hip-hop vocals and scat singing over a funk/bluegrass beat with elements of jazz dissonance. While this all might seem a little odd, it usually works beautifully.

Likewise the Dregs/Dixie Dregs. Classical Southern Prog Rock Metal Jazz Fusion, often all in the same song.

The World/Inferno Friendship Society play "cabaret punk" or "circus punk" with plenty of references to Weimar Germany and smashing the state. Oh, and they did a tribute album about the life of Peter Lorre. Of course.

Jaga Jazzist is one of the most prominent bands in the Nu Jazz scene. They started off by mixing big-band jazz with drum-n-bass and trip-hop. On later albums they also incorporate elements of post-rock and prog-rock.

Big & Rich's first two albums featured country, metal and rap all rolled into one. And many critics said it was great.

Similarly, Big & Rich protegé Cowboy Troy performs country rap, although he's hardly the only artist to do so.

And have you heard the solo album Big Kenny put out before Big & Rich existed? That's something along the lines of synthpop, lounge lizard and British invasion, with happy country lyrics.

John Zorn, the producer of Mr. Bungle's first album, known for blowing the minds of music nerds with his free jazz / metal / surf / western nonsense albums like: "Radio,Torture Garden, and Leng T'che, featuring Boredoms vocalist Yamatsuka Eye. But the rest of his catalogue is eclectic too. Name any musical genre and he has played it, even switching back and forth in one and the same track.

Mr. Bungle themselves too, most apparent in their song "None of Them Knew They Were Robots," on their album "California."

Dwight Yoakam is highly eclectic himself. His style is reminiscent of Buck Owens' "Bakersfield sound", but with several rock influences ranging from Elvis to Queen to Cheap Trick. Yes, he actually did a country cover of a Queen song.

Granted, the song in question ("Crazy Little Thing Called Love") certainly has a Rockabilly feel to it in the first place.

That's how The Polyphonic Spree's sound got built up: The lead singer, bassist and drummer were members of the alt rock band Tripping Daisy, the flautist was big into avant-garde progressive stuff, the percussionist & harpisit were clearly classically trained, the synth & theremin players brought some electronica influence, etc...

Sufjan Stevens' first album, A Sun Came, mixed rock with American and Middle-Eastern folk music. His breakout hit albums, Michigan and Illinois, mixed rock and folk with neoclassical orchestrations of varying levels of bombast. The Age of Adz was a mix of orchestral music and Synth-Pop.

Calexico mixes rock, country, Mexican folk (particularly mariachi), post-rock, and occasionally funk or jazz. Any given song may feature trumpets, accordion, violin, cello, steel guitar, synthesizers, or any combination of the above.

Over the course of their career, Led Zeppelin did folk, country music, gospel, synth-pop, reggae, punk and heavy metal while incorporating Motown, Middle Eastern and South Asian influences. And yet, they're still seen as a heavy blues-rock band.

Opeth. "You got your progressive rock in my death metal!" And vice versa. Not only that, but it works.

As they fit quite neatly into prog-metal territory.

Frank Zappa is practically a genre unto himself. Rock-funk-dance-classical-heavy-bluesy-jazz-fusion-progressive-pop-lounge with unusual time signatures, frequent tempo changes in strange keys leading into what sounds like freeform fusion guitar noodling solos that are in reality all entirely written out as complete compositions — all in one song. There's no easy way to describe the kind of music Frank made, except to call it Zappa.

He also retired from rock for a while to do orchestral music. He said in an interview that he returned to rock because he used a section of prerecorded music in a classical concert, and the critics couldn't tell the difference. His best known orchestral albums are London Symphony Orchestra, The Perfect Stranger and The Yellow Shark.

Also note that quite a bit of his music can be considered cartoon music without the cartoons, early rap/hip-hop and his spoken word themes - combined with the other genres, he's probably THE epitome of the trope itself.

Notable among his classical influence was Edgard Varèse. His 15th birthday present was a long-distance call to Varèse's house. He also admired Anton Webern, Igor Stravinsky, many jazz and pop artists, his friend Captain Beefheart (found below), and well, many others. Hence this trope.

Captain Beefheart, a frequent collaborator with Frank Zappa, is perhaps even more eclectic. Starting with a base of psychedelic rock and blues, he went on to incorporate jazz, boogie, Avant Garde Music, and experimental styles with discordant but melodic riffs; combined with a unique lyrical style that blended the poetic, humorous, and surreal. What puts him in another league to Zappa is the fact he wasn't afraid to do serious pop songs - "Too Much Time" from "Clear Spot" being the most impressive. Beefheart was always trying to make people feel something with his music, whereas Zappa mostly created things for his own amusement.

Little Feat is another band with a Zappa connection (original leader Lowell George had been a guitarist for the Mothers of Invention) that definitely falls into this category, incorporating ever-shifting elements of rock, country, blues, jazz, funk, and gospel into their sound.

Japanese band m-flo mixes rap and hip-hop with a number of things, including jazz, techno, Barbra Streisand ("The Way We Were"), among others, depending on the album/song.

Add to all this the possibility of being in the Contemporary A Cappella genre — that is, being a jazz musician (or rocker) (or folk musician) (or whatever) but being too cheap to buy instruments and having to sing all those parts instead. (The theme from Where In The World Is Carmen Sandiego is probably the instance you personally are most familar with.) With a little creativity, you can do just about any genre you want in a cappella: witness, for instance, the death-metal barbershop quartet.

Of Montreal's recent albums, especially Skeletal Lamping, where, as one reviewer stated, "Barnes leaps through genres that don't even exist, from acid glam psychedelia to sixth dimensional heroin pop." This is a bit of an understatement - listen to "Id Engager," keeping in mind that in its place on the album, it comes off as extremely restrained, an obvious radio single. The other single from the album has the last minute or so replaced with a loop of the chorus to hide the Mood Whiplash. Their sound includes funk, disco, R&B, talking songs, psychedelia, indie pop, and jangle pop.

Mago de Oz is normally just a Spanish language guitar rock band... but has numerous songs that have a Celtic rhythm, 80's guitar band power chords, and lyrics in Spanish.

Actually it's a Folk Metal/Heavy Metal with Classic, Celtic, Symphonic Metal and Hard Rock influences, open to new styles

Some of Estradasphere's members have been trained in metal, jazz, and classical music. They also have a guy who plays keyboards and shamisen. The result is cool and wierd.

The Beatles themselves went from '50s-influenced rock to Merseybeat to jangly folk-rock to swirly psychedelia to acoustic pieces to blues, soul, jazz, pop, music-hall, country, rockabilly, the avant-garde, reggae/ska, Beach Boys influences, proto-punk, proto-metal, proto-prog, proto-funk... and yet, they developed their own distinctive style(s), and distinctive slant on the styles they tackled. The most Genre Roulette album they ever brought out was The White Album.

The Swedish band Movits, who recently appeared on the Colbert Report, blend hip-hop with the swing jazz popularized by Benny Goodman and Cab Calloway.

127 mix rock, jazz, punk and Iranian dance music. And they sing in Farsi, English and French.

Well Nick Cave was the lead singer for the Birthday Party. Check out The Friend Catcher, Release the Bats, Mr. Clarinet, and Mutiny in Heaven. Plus now he has Grinderman, which is Noise and blues and whatever else it is.

The Cat Empire play a mix of jazz, ska, funk, hiphop, flamenco and sometimes reggae.

When the Australian hip-hop group The Herd aren't doing political songs, they mix polka and rap. Unpredictable even has rap verses in Czech and Spanish accompanied by a traditional folk song that's slowly speeding up.

Between the Buried and Me has described their fourth album, Colors, as "new wave polka grunge" and "adult contemporary progressive death metal".

Look at this: on the one hand, you've got black metal, which consists of fuzzy, distorted guitars, insanely fast drumming, demented screaming vocals and a focus on a dark, evil atmosphere. On the other hand, you've got post-rock, which consists of a base of clean, slowly picked guitars, mid-tempo, carefully played drums, no singing whatsoever, eccentric song structures and what music critic Ciarán Tracey called "the redemptive note common to all post rock": a vaguely hopeful atmosphere. Despite the obvious contradictions, in recent years bands combining the two have become increasingly common, most notably Wolves in the Throne Room and Irish band Altar of Plagues.

Drone metal progenitors Sunn O))) — originally an Earth tribute band, but whose reputation has far overshadowed their obscure early influence — have been inching closer to post-rock territory, with such recent efforts as Monoliths & Dimensions. Don't mention this to purist fans; they might be offended (though their hearing is so damaged, they'll probably never notice).

Even farther away from drone-metal is Deep In Ocean Sunk the Lamp of Light by Æthenor—a side-project, including O'Malley from Sunn O)))—which serves up disturbing random-noise glitch with (almost pretty!) twinkling music-box chiming, then dumps it all into the Pro Tools Cuisinart set to Liquefy.

Earth themselves fits sort of into this field, as while their earlier albums was pretty standard drone doom, with the release of "Hex: Or Printing in the Infernal Method," they have essentially become a drone-western band.

Finnish band Alamaailman Vasarat jokingly refer to themselves as "kebab-kosher-jazz-film-traffic-punk-music." This is about as accurate a description of them as you're going to get.

If you're curious: most of their songs kind of sound like the Beetlejuice theme with a distinct oompah klezmer vibe. They've done heavy metal tracks and ballads as well, and the band members primarily play horns and strings. They're really cool.

Omodaka is a collaboration between electronic musician Soichi Terada and enka singer Akiko Kanazawa. The two genres combine surprisingly well, it turns out.

Ian Dury's first group was a pub act called Kilburn and the High Roads, which combined the rockabilly stylings of Dury's hero, Gene Vincent, with the New Wave punk influences which were popular in the pub rock circuits. With the Blockheads, he started to incorporate rock 'n' roll, jazz, folk, reggae, ska, a bit of disco and old vaudevillian, music hall comedy songs into the repertoire.

Björk's Medúlla is esentially a capella electronica. Highlights include "Oceania", "Who Is It", "Where Is the Line", and "Triumph of a Heart", which is an a capella dance song.

Tori Amos' "Professional Widow" combines elements of blues, industrial, medieval, classical, and rock. In other words, imagine an alternative rock song with a harpischord instead of an electric guitar. Also, the song goes from harpischord rock to bluesy piano ballad a couple of times during the song.

The Beekeeper is a mixture of baroque pop, R&B, and blue-eyed soul.

Canadian band Enter The Haggis combines traditional Celtic music with rock, pop and jazz influences. The band includes a full-time bagpiper.

Another Canadian band, going by the name Unexpect, is a great example of this trope. Here's what Wikipedia has to say about them:

Unexpect often is an avant-garde extreme metal band from Montreal, Canada with an amalgamation of different styles of music, including black metal, death metal, progressive metal, melodic heavy metal, European Classical music, opera, medieval music, jazz, electro, ambient, noise, gypsy music, and circus music.

Although the band perfers to just be called a "metal" band. They, like a few other bands these days, can't understand the bizzare genres like "New-Wave of American Psychedelic Rap Metal".

The debate rages on to this day as to what exact genre you can call Children of Bodom. Considering they've done covers of songs by Britney Spears and Kenny Rodgers, you can see their influences are far and wide.

They're generally labelled as melodic death metal, and the covers are less of an indication of actual influence and more just a general trademark, that being one or two wacky/ironic covers per album as bonus tracks. Of course, it's become predictable enough that the joke has lost its luster.

Although commonly associated with Progressive Rock, influential Canadian band Rush has seen considerable variation in their sound. Starting out as a straightforward Hard Rock/early Heavy-Metal band, they evolved through Prog Rock and Synth Rock, while incorporating elements of Jazz, Reggae, Pop, and even Rap; before returning to their hard rock roots, including releasing an album of classic Rock covers.

This trope is actually made into lyrics in Rush's song 'You Bet Your Life': "...light pop hip-hop metalist..."

Diablo Swing Orchestra are making a name for themselves in the avant-garde metal scene by combining, of all things, swing and metal. They dislike genre classifications, but if pressed will describe their sound as "riot opera," which they feel is the best description of their sound. Let's put it this way: the band posted some details about their upcoming third album on their Facebook page, including the statement "Expect some Turkish pop mixed with black metal and Chinese boy choirs among other things." They received numerous comments about how excited people were about the album, but none expressing any disbelief at the mixture.

Not to menton throwing in some jazz, tango and big band.

Before they were Mute Math, they were Earthsuit, whose musical style was a mix of rap, rock, electronica, jazz, and reggae. And it was a Christian band.

John 5. Industrial Bluegrass. Yeah.

In the same vein, Greg Koch. Instrumental Country-Blues-Metal-in-the-vein-of-Steve-Vai. Also yeah. Not to mention his comedic talent.

Music professor Gil Trythall released an album in 1971 titled Country Moog. Yes, that's country as in the folksy musical genre, and Moog as in the space-age synthesizer.

The Tiger Lillies are... well, okay: the lead singer is a raw falsetto who can make his voice sound like Louis Armstrong's, only six octaves higher. The bassist plays a thin standing base like it's a cello. The (brush) drummer has a suitcase full of discarded toy cars, rattlers, firecrackers, baby dolls, rubber chickens and dildoes, which, yes, he uses to make noise. They perform in whiteface and bowler hats. Their songs range from serious ballads about sailors dying alone on the ocean to manic screaming being in love with a giraffe's vagina up in the sky. Their material is written by Edward Gorey (among others). Their fans include Terry Gilliam, Matt Groening, the Franz Ferdinand guys and John Cameron Mitchell. Marilyn Manson and Dita von Teese got married to their music. And they called themselves "Brechtian Punk Cabaret" long before it was hip.

Linkin Park has always been built around four ingredients = rock, electronica, metal, and hip-hop. Which of these elements take prominence depends on the song, and new elements can be brought in at any time. In fact, each individual album fits:

Living Things could be described as "Electronic Music meets Rap Rock", being a combination of the previous four albums made to create something completely new.

The Hunting Party brings back Nu Metal elements, but it gets buried underneath the Hard Rock, Hardcore Punk, and Heavy Metal influences that it isn't as noticeable. Easily the heaviest and least commercial friendly of the lot.

There were a shit-ton of Christian nu-metal/rapcore bands before them. P.O.D, Pillar, Project 86, PAX217... the list goes on. The only thing that made 38th Parallel original was that their name didn't begin with a "P" and they barely squeezed by on that.

The three members of Italian instrumental experimentalists Zu play bass guitar, drums and a (highly distorted) baritone saxophone. They frequently feature guest musicians, including The Melvins' guitarist King Buzzo, Mike Patton of Faith No More and Japanese electronic musician Nobokazu Takemura. The result is a groaning, squealing and cataclysmic semi-improvised fusion of Metal, Noise-Rock, Free-Jazz, Mathcore, and No-Wave Punk. Compared by one struggling and confused music reviewer to 'Lightning Bolt covering Trout Mask Replica in the middle of a knife fight'.

Doctor Steel has been described as hip-hop industrial opera, much to his enjoyment.

The Suicidal Rap Orgy, a group of Australian noise artists who inexplicably decided to make a, uh, rap collective. Basically, imagine guttural 'or' shrieking male vocals, absurd shrieking female vocals, and lyrics based entirely around various creative combinations of human waste, sex, and violence. "The band are often known for their disgusting liveshows in which they wind up naked and horribly grotesque lyrics that are in a similar vein to GWAR and GG Allin."

Dälek combines Hip-Hop with Shoegazing, Noise Rock, and Industrial and has occasionally been dubbed as metal-shoegaze-hip-hop, but not by themselves. They just prefer to be called hip-hop.

The pAper chAse make post-hardcore/classic emo with minimalist classical structures, accompanied by heavy industrial beats and sampling, in a heavily-orchestrated style with touches of jazz and blues on literary Noise Rock concept albums heavy on the Nightmare Fuel.

Bone Thugs-n-Harmony combines barbershop doo-wop harmony, with speed rap, with tinges of Jamaican patois in their rhyme scheme.. Usually within the same song where they change the tempo of their delivery mid-verse.

The Doors were made up of a jazz drummer, a flamenco guitarist, a classical organist, and a poet-vocalist.

Gentle Giant: What happens when you get together three brothers out of a soul group, a classically trained keyboardist, a blues guitarist, and a volatile series of drummer, and they all start playing recorders? You end up with Gentle Giant, whose songs ranged from quasi-medieval violin-powered tunes, to entirely percussive pieces, to a capella ballads.

A professor of mine used almost this exact phrase to describe the sound of the band Lucero.

Body Count deserves a mention, having been a thrash metal band fronted by Ice-T, with gangsta-ish lyrics to match.

Alabama 3(you'd know them for the Sopranos theme) was formed in an attempt to prove that it was possible to combine country with acid house.

Blondie started out a Reggae-influenced Punk band, added synthesizers and Pop hooks and moved into New Wave, and in the process incorporated elements of Funk and Rap.

British rock group Motörhead blended heavy metal and punk rock in an unprecedented manner, giving birth to a genre variously known as "speed metal" or "punk metal". They are notable for being one of the few bands to straddle the fierce punk/metal rivalry of late 70s/early 80s Britain, well respected by the most die-hard fans of both camps.

The New Orleans sludge scene drew inspiration from grunge, hardcore punk, doom metal, Southern rock, and country to create a unique style of slow, gritty metal. No one band can be said to have invented the style, with various groups often sharing members and engaging in frequent collaboration, although The Melvins and Black Flag are both noted as major precursors.

The Band Morphine mixed Lounge, Blues, Jazz, Rock N' Roll and Indie Rock with a Two String Slide Bass, a Baritone Saxophone and Drums. They invented Low Rock.

Industrial Rockone-man band Celldweller fuses genres to the point that it's almost impossible to keep track of all the genres that are being mashed together.

Waltari are a perfect example: Alternative metal, punk, techno, electronic, rap, death metal, grindcore, hard rock, symphonic, folk, thrash, pop, funk, industrial and drum 'n' bass are all quite merrily put together on the same album. And the best part is it actually works.

Scissor Shock, who have even managed to combine this with Genre Roulette.

One of the reasons we still keep Kanye West around is because his music quite awesomely mixes different genres he likes, not to mention his "baroque pop" excursion 808s & Heartbreak. To date, he sampled King Crimson, Michael Bolton, Bette Midler, The Doors, Shirley Bassey, Elton John, Daft Punk, Labi Sifre, Can, Nina Simone, Tears For Fears, The Alan Parsons Project and the list goes on...

Guns N' Roses. The bands classic lineup were all into rock music but the band members each had their own style influenced by a different genre. Axl was included by more melodic and heavily arranged music like Queen, Slash was based in blues and ratty hard rock like Aerosmith, Izzy edged more towards simple acoustic song writing like Bob Dylan, Duff was punk and Steven was the hair metal scene. Together these influences came together and made Appetite For Destruction what it was. They replaced Steven with Matt Sorum, which swapped the hair metal vibe for a big epic arena sound which added a little flair to Use Your Illusion.

Mangue Bit is a musical movement from the Brazilian state of Pernambuco which mixed traditional music styles, mostly maracatu, with hip hop, punk rock and trash metal. It's awesome!

Also from Brazil, two bands (one with a comedic vein, and another straight satire) embodied this in the 90s: Raimundos played "Forrócore", mixing traditional rhythm forró with hardcore punk, and Mamonas Assassinas had along with straight comedy rock (or in one case, comedy metal), rock parodies of Brazilian country, forró, pagode and Portuguese music.

Thrice. They started out your typical hardcore metal band, but moved into far more experimental territory with their later albums. Some songs on the Earth disk of the Alchemical Index sound like Bluegrass and Jazz!

Gorillaz; their music is a mix of Hip-Hop, Rock, Rap, Electronica, Soul, Country and many many more.

Delhi 2 Dublin plays a mix of Indian Bhangra and Celtic jigs, with some ragga thrown for good measure.

Rabbit Junk is essentially Hardcore Punk, Industrial, Black Metal, and Hip Hop. Different songs tend to focus more on one genre than the other (though usually two at once), their early stuff is mostly Hardcore Punk Industrial.

With so many references to "Thrash crossed with..." it's possibly easy to forget that Thrash itself was a cross between early 80's British Metal and the Punk music.

The Yoshida Brothers fuse rock stylings with the distinctive sounds of the shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument that looks something like a three-string banjo. They've been called the "Jimi Hendrix of the shamisen", just to give you an idea.

Caravan Palace is a French band that combines French house music and Gypsy jazz and American swing.

Voltaire (the musician) calls himself a "Neo-Victorian gypsy pirate vaudeville band." ...and that seems to miss out quite a few genres fans of his notice.

Kid Rock can turn out some songs that certainly feel like this. Rock, rap, blues and country influences kinda mix together in a way that allows his material to be played on a majority of major radio stations without fully breaking genres. It's so bad that some people classify him as his own genre at times to make things simpler.

Brazilian band Pato Fu is pop rock mixed with just about any rhythm conceived. It culminates in an album recorded with toy instruments.

The Kentucky Headhunters. At first glance they seem like a Southern rock band, but closer inspection shows plenty of soul and bluegrass influences. Who would've ever thought that traditional country like "Oh Lonesome Me" or "Only Daddy That'll Walk the Line" could fit on the same album as covers of "Spirit in the Sky" and "Let's Work Together"?

Sugarland seems to be heading towards this. Although mainly a more acoustic bent on modern-day Country Music, their song "Stuck Like Glue" features a prominent accordion line, as well as a reggae-rap breakdown and a pinch of Auto-Tune near the end.

Type O Negative's music is a mixture of punk, doom and thrash metal, goth with a hint of Beatlesque melodies.

This trope is applicable to all of Michael Gira's projects, as well as almost everyone he's been associated with. Look at Akron/Family. Or David Coulter. Hell, Fire On Fire...

The Style Council. Just the Style Council

Just look at the list of genres wikipedia lists: Rock, New Wave, synthpop, Sophisti-pop, deep house, Avant-Garde, Classical, Jazz, Funk. And they leave out rap, acid jazz, and many others. And everytime they do something new, it is epic. Can you say nearly 8 minute long funk songs?

Stoner metal band Monster Magnet are primarily based on Hawkwind and Black Sabbath, but also include elements of NWOBHM, glam, surf, Delta blues, The Doors, garage rock, and the occasional Latin-tinged ballad.

Brave Combo made their name playing polka versions of Jimi Hendrix songs.

The Kronos Quartet are a string quartet who, along from works from the classical tradition, have also covered Jimi Hendrix and Thelonious Monk tunes.

Electro Funk (aka Boogie): Which was/is a mixture of funk, R&B and electro. Arguably The Zapp Band was the prototypes.

The Red Hot Chilli Pipers, inventors of "bagrock". Let's play rock music on the bagpipes! Then let's play rocked-up versions of traditional pipe tunes! Then let's play both at once! (For instance, "Long Way To The Top - If You Wanna Bagrock" is a medley of "The Old Hag At The Churn", the titular AC/DC track, and "Steam Train To Mallaig".)

There are now two bagrock groups: former Chillis guitarist Gregor McPhie recently formed Bags Of Rock.

Good Hustle is mostly rock with experimental twinges of anything from blues, funk, to all flavoring of metal, pop, punk, electronica, noise, and has, at once point, done a country song. Their main gimmick is that they've vowed to never play any of their songs the same way twice - they'll just as often drop a funk line into what had been metal a few moments ago, or turn a smooth funk into noise.

Kaizers Orchestra can most easily be described as Tom Waits-esque Gypsy Punk with a profound respect for untraditional percussion.

The Velvet Underground took standard pop and brought in the influences of classical composers such as John Cage and La Monte Young. The result? They spit out distorted jams like the 17-minute "Sister Ray" from White Light/White Heat now considered a masterpiece. And, of course, they also wrote a lot of nice little pop ditties as well.

Vektor fits under the progressive thrash metal label, but there's so much stuff going on with them that "progressive" is almost an understatement. You've got thrash, yes, but they also throw in technical death metal, black metal, 80s shred, progressive rock, post-rock, power metal, Florida-style death/thrash, and even some down-'n-dirty Motorhead/Venom-style riffing. It has to be heard to be believed.

Japanese Black Metal band Sigh invoke both this trope and Genre Roulette often within the same song. Not only do they frequently incorporate influences from Progressive Rock, Psychedelic Rock, classical, Thrash Metal, jazz, and a number of other styles within their songs, but they often shift entire music genres on a dime, with oddities like dub reggae or disco breaks thrown into the middle of songs, or classical snippets overlaid with what appears to be samples of hundreds of giggling babies used to close albums. Imaginary Sonicscape is probably their most blatant use of this, but pretty much all of their works starting with about Infidel Art clearly invoke it, and there were suggestions that their sound would develop in that direction even before that.

Mr B. the Gentleman Rhymer combines rap with the posher version of British Music Hall. And the banjo.

HORSE The Band combines an unlikely mixture of Post-hardcore and Chiptune, occasionally with a post-metal vibe.

Vanilla Ice started out with radio-friendly pop-rap on To The Extreme, then switches to funk/jazz/rap on Mind Blowin, and then he went for a Nu-Metal sound on Hard To Swallow, since then his music has been a combination of industrial metal, nu-metal, punk, gangsta rap and hip-hop, Ice himself describes his music as "Molten Metal Hip-Hop".

The Prodigy became one of the greatest electronic acts of the 90s by Codifying the genre of music called "Big Beat" out of Acid House, Drum'n'Bass, Jungle, and Breakbeat on the electronic side, and Punk, Metal, Progressive, and Psychedelic, on the rock side, along side the heavy use of sampling from such diverse genres as Funk, Jazz, and Reggae.

Sting & The Police threw jazz, reggae and punk into a blender, adding New Wave into the mix later on. And that's not counting the other styles that Sting has explored in his solo career.

Progressive Metal band Painted In Exile are an almost ludicrous example; Skylines travels during its 9 minutes through hip-hop, extreme metal, jazz, progressive rock and melodic, poppy material and manages to remain a somewhat cohesive song.

Kylie Minogue's 1994 single "Confide In Me" is a mix of trip-hop, baroque pop, dance pop, Rn B, and new jack swing.

The 1970's group Dr. Buzzard's Original Savannah Band mixed disco with 1930's big band swing.

The band, Friends of Dean Martinez, are a good example of this. Two of their members composed the soundtrack to Red Dead Redemption, and their music certainly carries some of the spanish/western feel present in the game, but there's also a classical touch, and a little Post-Rock, surf rock, and psychedelic rock thrown together. And it's awesome.

Kagrra, combines VisualKei/rock and traditional Japanese music. They call it "Neo Japanesque".

The Egyptian artist Mohamed Mounir combines Egyptian pop, Funk, Jazz, Reggae, Blues, and traditional Nubian music. He is therefore one of the most popular—and definitely the most enduring—contemporary artists in Modern Egypt.

Enter Shikari embodies this trope perfectly. Get post-hardcore, stick a load of electronica in, add a twist of metal, flavour with dubstep and such as needed.

British genre-hoppers Sikth were described in one review as "speed metal, progressive metal, thrash, nu metal, metalcore, and cock-rock". Add in the lightning-speed jabbered vocals that border on scat-singing and the haunting piano melodies and you're halfway there.

Keelhaul play a bizarre fusion of mathcore and stoner metal, like Dillinger Escape Plan meets Kyuss with a shedload of marijuana. And it is awesome.

Slipknot. No, don't look at me like that - before Corey joined the band, they were the Mr. Bungle of nu-metal, mixing the genre with death metal, groove metal, industrial metal, funk, jazz and disco of all genres. This style can be seen on their demo album, Mate. Feed. Kill. Repeat.

Cattle Decapitation started out as fairly typical deathgrind with some noise influences, but as their career went on they grew more and more eclectic. As of now, they blend together deathgrind, technical death metal, post-rock, darkwave, noise, post-punk, free jazz, progressive rock, and various other genres into one very unpredictable package.

Blur. They went from shoegazer band to Britpop and then basically became a noise rock band with influences from grunge, gospel, trip hop and Pavement style lo-fi indie rock, before finally finishing up as something resembling Albarn's other project, Gorillaz - influences from jazz, hip hop, dub and world music.

The Crystalline Effect. Techno, trip-hop, EBM, industrial and electronic, and you never know what they'll come up with next.

The String Cheese Incident is mainly a bluegrass band, but with elements of funk, progressive rock, reggae, jazz, and even electronica.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids' first album Blank Generation mixes the stripped-down punk sound with the minimalist jazz/prog of Hell's former band, the Art Rockers Television. The second album, Destiny Street, included different styles including blues covers (I Can Only Give You Everything, originally by Them and also covered by MC5, and I Gotta Move, a Kinks cover), pop punk (Kid With The Replaceable Head), a sentimental punk ballad (Time), and the title song, Destiny Street, a seven-minute funk song. And every bit sounds just as Punk Rock as the Sex Pistols or the Ramones.

Zdob si Zdub. The Other Wiki lists them as "Ska-punk rapcore" which they may very well be. Let's just say there's a lot of guitar riffs, rapping, trumpets, sampling and Moldovan folk music. Just...just go listentothem.

Space are generally classified as indie, but draw influences from hip-hop (particularly on Spiders), film soundtracks, big band, rock 'n' roll, techno, and electronica, with Tin Planet being the most noticeable example of this. It's kind of expected, really, since the band had a singer who was more influenced by films than music, a classic rock fan guitarist, one drummer into jazz and another one into hip-hop and loops, a keyboard player who was seriously into dance music, and a bassist who liked literally anything. Jamie's songs were more indie/rock oriented, while Franny's tracks were almost entirely electronic instrumentals. Spiders made heavy use of loops and samples, Tin Planet was noticeably poppier, while Suburban Rock 'n' Roll and the never-released Flies had a harder edge to them. The lost album Love You More Than Football was somewhere in between. Their latest material has more of a Ska and Rockabilly feel blended with the Spiders sound.

British expatriate Edward Ka-Spel — of The Legendary Pink Dots, The Tear Garden, and Mimir — is fond of blending multiple musical styles and influences in his various projects; to the point where his music is typically categorized as "Experimental" or "Neo-Psychedelic", as it tends to vary widely between Post-Punk, Post-Rock, Psychedelic, Industrial, Electronica, and so on.

This is one way to describe the awesomeness that is OutKast. Another way is "Southernplayalisticadillacmusic."

John Paul Larkin started off simply doing scat-style jazz music. His manager suggested that he combine that with hip-hop and modern dance music. While hesitant at first, he later warmed up to it and it was this combination that would earn him fame as Scatman John.

A Hawk and a Hacksaw are pretty strictly folk music, but they mash many different folk traditions—Balkan, Turkish, Romani, Klezmer, Mariachi—into something unique.

RunD.M.C., during the fierce rivalry and segregation that existed between rock and hip-hop in The '80s, were one of the few acts to seamlessly combine the two together. Their unique style was the basis of the Rap Rock genre, and they proved that the two can coexist together. They are one of the few that were highly respected by both camps, which holds true to this day.

Sound Horizon is usually a Symphonic Metal band. Sort of. It's not unheard of for them to dip into baroque, pop rock, choral, orchestral, Russian folk, jazz, and, facetiously in one live concert, chiptune.

Revocation is technical/melodic death metal at their core, but in addition to copious amounts of thrash, they also throw in jazz, blues, Southern rock, first-wave metalcore, grindcore, math rock, 70s hard rock, 80s shred, surf rock, funk, 70s prog, and pretty much whatever the hell they feel like putting in. And it works.

Pop Will Eat Itself. British punk + goth rock + electronica + rap. At the time they were associated with "grebo", a loosely defined scene in the late 80's and 90's combining elements of alternative rock, garage rock, hip-hop, and electronic dance music.

Kerli refers to herself and her musical style as Bubble Goth, a combination of Bubblegum pop and Goth music.

Cardiacs. Half the people who hear it call it punk, half the people who hear it call it prog rock, all of them are somehow right...

Pepe Deluxé started their life playing big beat and trip-hop. Over time, they morphed into playing Psychedelic Rock instead, while maintaining a big beat approach to song construction. (Pepe Deluxé used to feature a lot of samples in their music; since the transition to psych rock, one of their guiding principles is to create songs that sound like they were built from samples, without actually using any samples.) Their 2012 album Queen of the Wave combines psych rock with Surf Rock and Baroque Pop, with additional influence from early electronic music, opera, soul, 60s girl-band pop, acid folk, and easy listening.

Maximum the Hormone are oft considered a nu-metal band, but their songs all have mixed elements taken from pop-punk, funk, extreme metal, punk rock, glam-rock, ska, and J-pop.

French rapper MC Solaar started as a fairly orthodox rapper in the 90s, mostly known for his optimistic themes and talent in convoluted rhymes. In the 2000s however, he started to mix his rap with pretty much everything, from jazz to rock to folk to techno to symphonic music to what-you-want (starting with Solaar pleure in 2001). He also sometimes adopts quite a unique diction, halfway between rap and singing. Sadly, it didn't work out that well for him since his old fans started to complain it wasn't rap anymore.

Rip Rig + Panic's music contains (both separately and in various combinations) elements of punk, jazz, classical, funk, dance pop, soul, noise rock, spoken word, and African and Latin rhythms. They are probably best known for this appearance on the Britcom The Young Ones.

Britpop band Supergrass was originally described as the Buzzcocks, the Jam, Madness, the Kinks, Small Faces, Elton John, David Bowie, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones thrown into a blender.

Toto's original drummer Jeff Porcaro described the band's debut single, Hold The Line, as: "a perfect example of what people will describe as your Heavy Metal chord guitar licks, your great triplet A-notes on the piano, your 'Sly'-hot-fun-in-the-summertime groove, all mishmashed together with a boy from New Orleans singing... and it really crossed over a lot of lines."

Delhi 2 Dublin is a band that mixes traditional Indian music (sitars and the like) with Celtic fiddles and whistles, and filters the lot through a little bit of techno.

Todd Edwards takes snippets from old Soul, R&B, Folk, Rock, Gospel, and Disco records and blends them all together into a mix of 2-step Garage and House.

The Avalanches' Since I Left You album ended up becoming this, due to the wide variety of samples used. It sounds like a mix of Breakbeat, Trip-Hop, Hip-Hop, House, Soul, Funk, Cabaret and Ambient music, with elements of 1940s-50s Easy Listening thrown in.

Ditto for their follow-up album Wildflower, which has additional elements of Psychedelic Rock, children's music and 60's and 70's easy listening.

With all these references to Jimi Hendrix, it's easy to forget that he played slightly noisy Rock and Roll mixed with Blues, various types of Jazz, Funk, Psychedelic Rock, and R&B with Punk Rock attitude.

The Cars were a curious mix of New Wave, arena rock, garage-rock, synth pop, Power Pop, mainstream pop-rock and '60's-influenced bubblegum (topped with Ric Ocasek's beat poet-influenced Word Salad Lyrics) with occasional dabblings in synth-minimalism, Queen-like vocal harmonies (Queen's early producer Roy Thomas Baker produced the first four albums) and Roxy Music-like art-rock, who were equally capable of fitting in with alternative, pop and hard rock demographics. And yet they never fully fit in with any of those styles. It did manage to fit in well with the music of the day and sell millions.

Darren Korb, the composer for the Bastion soundtrack, refers to it as "acoustic frontier triphop" and, by Pyth, it sure is. His soundtrack for Supergiant Games' subsequent project Transistor also fits - he described it as "old-world electronic post-rock".

MacUmba is a group that blends Brazillian Samba drums and rhythms with Highland bagpipes.

Boiled In Lead has been variously described as "celtopunk", "rock and reel", and probably most accurately, "unclassifiable". Their blurb on allmusic.com lists their "styles" as : "Celtic, Alternative/Indie Rock, Celtic Rock, Post-Punk, South/Eastern European Traditions, Middle Eastern Traditions, Traditional Middle Eastern Folk, Worldbeat". That pretty much says it all.

French progressive metal band Sebkha-Chott incorporate influences from so many disparate genres that it's difficult to describe them, apart from comparing them to other examples of this trope such as Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Mike Patton, Magma, and Frank Zappa. The band themselves make a mockery of genre by categorising themselves as made-up styles like Mekanik Metal Disco, Abstract Low Coast Hip Hop, Concrete Violence, AvantPorn Mekanik Metal, and Bizarre AvantPorn Mekanik TheaterCore.

Portland-based metal act Nux Vomica is, well... what the hell are they? When you get a band that mixes sludge metal and crust punk with, among other things, melodic death metal, post-rock, black metal, emo, and noise rock, you'll find that classifying them is a daunting task.

Inter Arma is an even better example. Mixing elements of sludge metal, black metal, post-rock, noise, Southern rock, progressive rock, neofolk, and country, they've created a sound that ensures that no one will ever really sound quite like them.

Norwegian band Shining began as an acoustic jazz quartet. Now, they combine black metal, free jazz, progressive rock, industrial, classical music and noise.

Russkaja combines Russian folk music, ska, punk, polka, metal, and funk, including the use of the "potete", a homemade instrument that combines a trumpet and a trombone. They refer to themselves as "Russian turbo polka".

Tool is notoriously difficult to classify due to the sheer amount of genres they cover. Progressive Rock, post-hardcore, Math Rock, Post-Rock, Noise Rock, ambient, art rock, and more all blend together to create something that really can't be conveniently labeled. "Progressive rock" and "progressive metal" are the most common labels applied to them, but even those are spotty at best.

Ghoul combines elements of thrash metal, death metal, goregrind, punk rock, surf rock, and hard rock to create a unique, fun, and immensely catchy style that ties in with their mythos very well.

The brony band Evening Star is a mix of Neoclassical, New Age, EDM, and drum & bass.

Justice started out as a French house act, but take a lot of influence from genres as diverse as disco, punk, indie rock, alternative metal, industrial and, especially on their second album Audio, Video, Disco, progressive rock.

Panic! at the Disco frontman Brendon Urie has described the band's genre as "trip-hop cabaret dance punk". And that was just their first album, A Fever You Can't Sweat Out. Their second album was Beatles-esque pop rock, and while their third was a return to the genre of the first, their most recent album is a combination of pop, rock, techno, and dance, with strong dubstep influences.

Robots with Rayguns is what you get when you combine synthwave, tech-house, hip-hop, and freestyle.

Lorde's music has elements of Dream Pop, Electronica, Synthpop, Minimalism, Ambient, Indie Pop, Art Pop, Dark Wave, Contemporary, and even a few traces of Hip-Hop can be found in the beats. All of this combines together to form a kind of music that's both Pop and Alternative simultaneously. Case in point, her Breakthrough Hit "Royals" topped both the US Pop and Alternative charts when it was released.

The genre of the band Twenty One Pilots is notoriously hard to pin down. Their music has elements of styles such as indie, pop, alternative rock, rap, and electronica/techno, among others. The tone can vary a lot from song to song, and even the same song can have parts that normally wouldn't really fit together, but they somehow make it work. And even though one song can be heavy on the electronics and rapping and another can be a light tune played on a ukulele, they still have a distinct sound that connects it all together. They just don't care about sticking to what other people define as genres. When a label is absolutely necessary, they're usually categorized as schizo-pop. Alternative Hip Hop is a term that's been used to describe them as well.

Tyler: I would describe our music as a burrito that has all the things that you want in it. Even chocolate. ...Which some people don't like. It's like, everyone likes chocolate. Not everyone might like chocolate and steak together, you know, which are two great things... So it's an acquired taste.

The Missing Parts is an acoustic trio based in Tucson, Arizona who frequently collaborate with other local bands and artists. Their genre is a bit difficult to pin down, but it definitely has some mixed Celtic and European folk elements.

Laurel Halo combines deep tech-house and IDM.

Issues is perhaps one of the first bands to combine the hard-hitting instruments of metal with the poppy R&B vocal styles of Top 40 music. They combine metalcore and nu metal together in a way that seems refreshing, and are among the first bands in over decade to make us of turntables. Their debut album took elements from just about every non-metal genre and mixed them together, including electronica, hip-hop, and even a gospel choir at the end. Word of God says their next album is going to be even more experimental. You could say they've formed a genre of their own, that some critics refer to as "Pop Metal" (whether that term is positive or not depends on your point of view).

Sleigh Bells has been described as a mix of pop, metal, punk, electronica, and R&B.

Gunslinger (the electronic band, not to be confused with bands of the same name in other genres) are a fusion of alternative rock, synthpop, psytrance, and dubstep.

Lifelover seems to be one of the most known to do this. While they were mainly focused within the Black Metal genre, they often threw themselves with Post-Punk, Doom Metal, dark ambient, depressive rock, hell even Pop music. This resulted with each of their four albums to sound different and more radical than before.

Clipping is a band that features fairly traditional rapping... over Harsh Noise.

Estradasphere were an experimental rock group who were very fond of mixing genres: On their website they claimed to have invented such genres as "Bulgarian Surf", "Romanian Gypsy-Metal", and "Spaghetti Eastern". The album Quadropus was a deliberate effort to tone things down and at least stick to one genre per song, though it's still unusual to hear Surf Rock ("Crystal Blue"), Rap Metal ("Body Slam"), and a traditional Greek instrumental ("Mekapses Yitonisa") all on the same album.

Don't forget Oingo Boingo, who started out as a performance art troupe (The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, inspired by Frank Zappa, above) which mutated into a mix of rock & roll, ska, scat, jazz, punk, new wave, funk, world music, and several other genres (whew!). Former members Steve Bartek (who got his start with psychedelic band Strawberry Alarm Clock) and Danny Elfman now write film scores, many of which are Genre Roulette/Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly themselves.

Major Lazer has this more-or-less as the main point. At the very least, they mix together EDM with Dancehall. However, they also take influence from African, Middle Eastern, and Indian music whenever they feel like, and experiment with Pop and Hip-Hop along the way.

Voivod started out as punky thrash metal, but by Killing Technology, they were a one-of-a-kind mix of thrash metal, progressive rock, post-punk, hardcore, noise rock, and modern classical. Essentially, they were the result of a classically-trained violinist picking up a guitar, getting heavily into prog, and forming a band with a bunch of punk kids who were more into Motorhead, Venom, and Discharge and letting all those influences coalesce together.

English girl group Girls Aloud were often cited for having a refreshing and experimental style especially in a time when many girl groups were all cut from a particular mold and also for having been formed on a reality TV show. Their debut single "Sound of the Underground" all contained elements of dance-pop, pop rock, drum and bass and surf rock. This was especially helped by British production team Xenomania, who were very fond of playing with and mashing multiple genres together.

Vampire Weekend combines indie rock and pop with African music, which they call the "Upper West Side Sweato".

The Music Tapes is a Rock band... were the main instrument is a Banjo (That is commonly fiddled like a Cello). Old Keyboards(So Old they don't use electricity), Brass Instruments, Bass, Drums and a Singing Saw (A Saw that is bowed like a Violin) are also commonly used. They also have things like a Singing TV and a giant Metronome to name a few. The songs themselves? Are more similar to Gothic Lullaby's then actual rock songs (Excluding a few from their first Album, 1st Imaginary Symphony for Nomad).

Raury combines folk with, of all things, hip hop. It's common for him to sing, but then suddenly start rapping out of nowhere, like a DIY wild rapper appearance. What's most surprising, is the fact that it actually works.

Cyber Space mixes spacesynth with Eurodance vocal samples.

Big Grams, a collaboration between rapper Big Boi (of Outkast fame, see above) and electronic rock band Phantogram. Since it combines both their styles of music, it could best be described as "Southern Psychedelic Electronic Experimental Shoegaze Rap".

Future Islands: '60s Soul meets '80s New Wave.

Jess Glynne blends old-school styles of Soul with modern Dance-pop / House Music, giving her a unique sound that feels both old and new.

Charli XCX already fits this being a mixture of dark wave, witch house, synthpop, electronica, and pop punk, but it's taken to extremes with 2016's Vroom Vroom EP. It can best be described as "experimental pop". Despite only being four songs long, it manages to cover bubblegum pop, grime, trap, EDM, future pop, and even industrial hip-hop.

Sophie, who also produced Charli XCX's Vroom Vroom and on tracks in her later albums, has a style has that can be seen as "experimental pop", featuring elements taken from J-pop, K-pop, Eurodance, and even boy band pop music — all taken to an "extreme" form, not mention the various noises he integrates into her music. It's almost impossible to tell what genre she's playing because of how weird it all sounds, especially since she tends to jump between styles for individual songs as well.

Dangerkids is Linkin Park-esque Nu Metal mixed with Metalcore and Electronic Music. They basically sound like what would happen if Linkin Park expanded upon the sound of their two original albums, rather than abandoning it completely.

Katy B combines R&B with various genres of EDM, such as dubstep and house. The kind of Electronic Music used depends on who the producer is in each song.

Nero is a mix of various Electronic Music genres, including Dubstep, Drum and Bass, electro-pop, breakbeat, and electronic rock. All of these came together to make their debut album Welcome Reality what it was. Their second album Between II Worlds is a different kind, fusing together electro, future house, big beat, and progressive for an overall darker sound.

The Glitch Mob are known for being very hard to describe. They combine gltich, electrogaze, IDM, hip-hop, synthpop, dubstep, and electronic rock together to form a sound that's one-of-a-kind.

Babymetal, one of those acts that could only have come from Japan, blend Japanese pop music, pretty much every genre of metal in existence from Power Metal to Black Metal, and several forms of electronic music, amongst other genres. They very well may have created their own genre. In fact, they literally did. Ever since they emerged, the 'kawaii metal' subgenre has formed in Japan to an increasingly large following. Which has since been certified as a real genre by The Other Wiki.

Texas Hippie Coalition has a style they call "Red Dirt Metal" — which takes influences from both genres. For those who don't know what red dirt is, it's a mix of folk, country, bluegrass, western swing, and blues rock. Now imagine that sonically cranked up with heavy and groove metal influences, and you get their sound.

The Go! Team, by band leader Ian Parton's own admission, was formed when he wanted to "create music incorporating Sonic Youth-style guitars, double dutch chants, Bollywood soundtracks, old school Hip-Hop, and electro".

Timmy Trumpet, as you can imagine, plays the trumpet... in an EDM setting.

Ratatat define their style as "rocktronica", which is fitting because it's equal parts rock music and electronica. Over the course of their career, they've integrated elements of funk, post-rock, and psychedelia, while playing Electronic Music backed by rather intricate guitar playing.

Tame Impala started as pretty straight-forward Psychedelic Rock, but by their third album, they became a bizarre mixture of psychedelia, pop, disco, R&B, funk, and electronica.

While starting as a traditional Death Metal band, Trepalium seem to be becoming some sort of hybrid Death Metal/Swing band if this video[1] is anything to go by. They also seem to be incorporating Voodoo-themes into their lyrics.

Wall of Voodoo played a mixture of new wave and Ennio Morricone-styled spaghetti western soundtrack music, in which one of the most distinctive elements was that their drummer Joe Nanini didn't usually play normal drums - instead, he played on cowbells and pots and pans to the accompaniment of a drum machine.

Take five dudes from grindcore, brutal death metal, and bestial black metal backgrounds and one dude from a prog background, and have them all decide to form a Progressive Metal band with significant Gothic Metal touches that pays homage to their love of The Gathering and the Peaceville Records catalog in general. Now have them hire a female jazz and soul singer who also just happens to love those same gothic bands after their original (male) vocalist leaves. Lastly, throw in a Southern swagger. You now have the general idea of Oceans of Slumber. Combining progressive metal, gothic metal, death metal, black metal, sludge metal, Southern rock, blues, gospel, jazz, and post-rock, there is no band that sounds quite like them.

Penguin Cafe Orchestra is chamber music drawing in elements of folk, country, minimalism, new age and the influence of electronic artists like Kraftwerk. Almost every article you will ever read about them will comment on how difficult they are to describe.

While undoubtedly a Death Metal band, Septicflesh have experimented with elements from so many other musical styles over the years that describing exactly how they sound is difficult. In addition to their prominent Symphonic Metal fusion in their current material (which in and of itself is brought on by frontman Seth Siro Anton's love of classical music), they also have noticeable Gothic Metal elements in their early albums, have experimented with Industrial Metal influences on Revolution DNA, include occasional Black Metal sections, and quite a bit more.

Novembers Doom is extremely difficult to classify. While they started off as a typical death-doom band, hence their name, they've changed their style so many times that even singer Paul Kuhr himself considers their name to be an Artifact Title. They are self-described as "dark metal", and could best be described as a fusion of death-doom, gothic metal, progressive metal, and melodic death metal along with whatever the hell else they decide to do.

This is arguably the point behind the New Weird, a literary "genre" intended as a reaction to the Scifi Ghetto and a return to the H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith era when fantasy, science fiction, and horror were still more or less all one genre. See the New Weird page for a much more thorough explanation.

After decades, if not centuries, of Literary Fiction posturing itself as a "superior"or "non-generic" genre and refusing to do much playing around with the conventions of other genres, we finally have a good number of modern and semi-modern LitFic authors and books that consciously blend the archetypical elements of LitFic with other genres, including:

The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie. Epic story centered around two Indian men in London, but with an uncompromisingly comical tone and so many Magical Realism elements that the book verges on outright fantasy.

Generosity by Richard Powers. Same tone, prose style, and characterizations as LitFic, but it's just as obsessed with science as any Science Fiction novel, specifically in the areas of nature vs. nurture and the ethics of genetic engineering.

Look at Me by Jennifer Egan. Again, has the same style and many of the same themes as LitFic, but with an unusually surreal tone, a private detective, and an overarching mystery plot.

The Course of the Heart by M. John Harrison. A gritty literary reworking of The Great God Pan, which focuses on the aftermath of three friends summoning a creature from another plane.

Clonk started out as a 2D fighting game much like Worms, but also contains elements of a strategy game, especially in the rounds with a "Settlement" or a "Mining" goal, adventure game in the rounds with a set story, a plain wide open sandbox game, and with all the expansion packs and downloadable content, you can well give it fantasy, western, cyberpunk, racing, heck, even zombie survival game elements as well.

Knights in the Nightmare defies easy description. It's a Real Time/Turn-Based Strategy Hybrid which incorporates Bullet Hell elements because the enemy is shooting at the game cursor, not the units temporarily brought to life to attack back. There are RPG Elements for the units being controlled, but there's some stuff that can't even properly be classified, like hitting a big red/blue switch for Law and Chaos that completely changes the hit ranges and attack types for your characters across the map, or that enemy placement is decided by a roulette system.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is often classified as an action adventure as the game is about equal parts combat and interacting with the environment. However, the game mixes in elements of stealth and survival horror, contains RPG Elements, has rhythm-based combat, and is also a Metroidvania game.

Persona 2 is an RPG Urban Fantasy about saving the world and facing your fears and with psychological elements and it's a horror game like the other Megatens and it's got elements of romance. Confusing stuff. Subsequent Persona games are all that but with dating sim mechanics. Hmm...

Monday Night Combat at first looks like another Third-Person Shooter, but teamwork is vital, playing deathmatch style tends to do as much harm as good, you're effectively fighting on a two-sided Tower Defense game, you've got to upgrade your abilities and buy bots with money you earn during battle, and topping it all off it's class-based to keep things balanced.

Fantasy Earth Zero: Most of the game is typical MMO stuff, but the main heart of the game is basically 100-man PvP RTS/Tower Defense.

Brütal Legend starts as a Hack-and-Slash game with a dash of racing, but later becomes a RTS-Hack and Slash game with some racing side missions and occasional rhythm-based segments.

An in-universe example, the crappy Fake Band Kabbage Boy that Eddie is stuck working for in the opening cutscene actually has their song unlockable for the in-game radio (Eddie even audibly groans when you unlock it). If you sort songs by genre, it's listed under "Second Wave of American Neonate Melodic Rap Metalcore". It's the only song in that category, of course.

Achron is superficially an RTS, but the time travel mechanics make it play quite differently. The creators call it a "Meta Time Strategy Game".

Pathologic and Turgor, by Ice Pick Lodge. They're both first person action-adventure surreal/lovecraftian horror philosophy art games where the aim isn't really to kill things but you're probably going to be doing that in the process of whatever other endeavor you have.

Getter Love!! is a combination of a board game, a dating simulator, a few free-motion mini-games, and all kinds of hilarity, including hip-wiggling panda bears. Plan out where you want to go, use item cards to promote your relationships or screw your opponents over, talk to your friends or one of seven girls, take the girl of your choice out to places, buy presents for your girl of choice, and even run into various random folks. Watch out for the resident Gonkwho wants to harass youand fuck up your relationships! All kinds of wacky hijinx ensues until someone confesses their love, after which either either school resumes or the winner's girl appears in a pastel-colored aura while talking to you.

Hatoful Boyfriend: Oh, look, another Visual Novel / Dating Sim. Oops, it has just turned into a horror game. And just like that, now, it's a turn-based RPG. And, after you thought it can't get any weirder, it turns into a survival horror/mystery. With pigeons.

Deadly Premonition is a survival horror adventure wide-open life sim—and that's just the gameplay. The story attached to it is a murder mystery police procedural horror-fantasy romance that ping-pongs between nightmarish tragedy and screwball comedy, with every mood in between.

Folk Tale is a city-builder and survival game, as you must build a village with various services, harvest resources, keep your denizens happy and well-fed, while your manpower is one of your resources. It also has a typical Strategy RPG gameplay, as each villager has stats, experience levels, inventory slots, and can be manually controlled while they aren't working; also, some of the available jobs are purely military, instead of classical services like farmer, miner, lumberjack, hunter, etc.

Borderlands. From a story standpoint, it's a Black ComedySpace Western. From a gameplay standpoint it's a First Person Shooter with classic RPG elements (although that latter category is rapidly becoming a game genre in itself).

Overwatch is an unlikely mixture of a team-based First-Person Shooter in a Pixar-like setting. The roster of colorful characters can be compared to that of a Fighting Game, while each character brings a unique influence into the game to give it something with far more personality than your standard FPS.

LittleBigPlanet: Try explaining this to someone who hasn't really played it. The first game is a platformer, but encourages you to build whatever kind of level you want, whether it be an actual level in the vein of Mario or just a music or set-piece showcase. The second game, however, looks to embrace this wholeheartedly, as it was marketed as a platform for games rather than a platform game. The main game showcases some unique gameplay styles, including a side-scrolling shooter that looks like a retro arcade game. The overall effect is a mashup of Gmod for consoles, Mario, winks and nods toward Monty Python-style humor, and sinister weaponized cuteness.

Story wise, it's a philosophical futuristic war story as well as a character-driven drama set After the End, starring stylish androids.

This is also the only way you can describe the soundtrack to NieR: Automata. Basically electronic/ambient/percussive/cinematic/world. It can dip into various other music genres, like trance, classical crossover, opera, children's music, and probably more. It's awesome.

The soundtrack of Hypnospace Outlaw features the surprisingly plausible and fleshed-out in-universe musical genre of "Haze", a sort of lo-fi synth-rock "that sounds like it's being recorded in a parking garage", according to one of its fans. Plus its ancestors, and its various strange spin-offs. Particularly bizarre, even by Haze standards, is Coolpunk, an inexplicably wildly popular sub-genre which throws in Christmas music and advertising jingle samples. Coolpunk dies an ignominious death during your tenure.

In the South Park episode "Christian Rock Hard", the four main characters' band Moop has, by their admission, elements of jazz fusion, Latin jazz, hip-hop, and R&B, while the one song they're heard playing sounds more garage-rock.

Others

This trope describes American culture in general. While its core is unmistakably British, due to the country's colonial past, trade and immigration have added elements of French, Japanese, West African, and Mexican culture, to name a few.

Spain and Portugal were colonized by the Moors throughout most of the Middle Ages, thus the countries have a lot of Moorish influences in their architecture.

Belgium is a surreal hybrid of Dutch, Flemish, Walloon, French, and German influences.

Switzerland is a cross between French, German and Italian cultural influences.

The English language's vocabulary pool is mainly Germanic, Latin, Greek, and French, but also includes words from languages as diverse as Japanese, Swahili, Nahuatl, Czech, Romani, Spanish, Quechua, and Wiradjuri (an Australian Aboriginal tongue).

Some examples:

Japanese: manga, anime, kamikaze

Swahili: jumbo, safari, dengue

Nahuatl: tomato, ocelot, chocolate

Czech: dollar, pistol, robot

Romani: pal, shiv, drag (the clothing style)

Spanish: mosquito, armadillo, cargo, guerilla

Quechua: cocaine, jerky (the food), condor (the bird)

Wiradjuri: billabong, kookabura

Some conlangs (constructed languages) do this deliberately. Lojban's pool of gismu (basic words) comes from English, Spanish, Mandarin, Russian, Arabic, and Hindi, as those were the most widely spoken languages at the time of its creation. Toki Pona includes highly simplified words from Tok Pisin, English, Croatian, and other languages. Esperanto was valiantly designed with this principle in mind, although its reach scarcely extends beyond Western Europe, something it's been highly criticized for.

This trope can be applied to food as well. The (fraternal, not identical) twin Louisiana styles of Creole and Cajun cooking can be described as French/Spanish/African/Native American/Caribbean.

"Fusion" cuisine in general tends to be this trope. Not so much when it involves related styles (eg. Chinese/Korean); but many forms incorporate multiple completely unrelated cuisines.

Another fictional example, probably: Although we never hear it, Rastabilly Skank in Red Dwarf sounds like it should be a cross between reggae, rockabilly, ska and punk. These four being the soundtrack of skinheads of all political stripes, the mix appearing somewhere, sometime isn't as unlikely as it sounds. "Skabilly" is the closest real thing.

We do in fact hear it in the show very briefly: one track that Lister is playing in the bunk room, and the lines that Lister and Ace Rimmer sing ("'do you like rastabilly?'C'mon Dave, sing!").

In one segment of the NPR radio-show This American Life entitled "Paint By Numbers", host Ira Glass commissioned a song combining the most-hated musical elements as voted by the public - The Most Unwanted Song. It featured, among other things, an opera singer rapping a cowboy song accompanied by a tuba and a children's choir singing about Labor Day! AND IT'S AWESOME!

Seattle over Memorial Day weekend hosts the Folklife Festival (the largest folk and eclectic music festival in the US that's still free admission). Expect a lot of experimental bands and equally experimental descriptions in the guidebook. It's not uncommon for one to find sea shanties rendered in chiptune or bagpipe and steel-drum covers of Beatles songs.

Another single song example: Bassnectar mixes different subgenres, but usually stays within the broad genre of Electronic Music - However, the song "Pennywise Tribute" is more or less jungle dubstep skatepunk (the title being a Shout-Out to punk rock group Pennywise).

"Arright, well if that's what it is, well then, for me it's Zumba meets Nicola Tesla meets The Casimir Effect meets The Arturians meets The Hermetic Aura of the Golden God meets Dadaism. In a pyramid. You know. Tae-bo."

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